Drean Commodore
Argentina's Commodore magazine, for a machine called the Drean Commodore 64
Drean Commodore ran from December 1985, covering Commodore machines built in Argentina under licence by Drean. The magazine names the product the way its readers bought it — la Drean Commodore 64 — which is the whole difference between Argentina's route to the machine and Britain's.
Drean Commodore was published in Argentina from December 1985. This library holds 27 issues, running to 1988.
The machine has the licensee’s name in it
Argentina did not import the Commodore 64; it built one. Drean manufactured Commodore machines locally under licence, and the magazine names the product the way its readers actually bought it:
“…que Peek presentó en el mercado argentino para la Drean Commodore 64.”
Not the Commodore 64 sold by Drean — the Drean Commodore 64. Across the run the word Drean appears more often than any machine name: 1,095 times against the C-64’s 837.
That single naming detail is the difference between Argentina’s route to the machine and Britain’s, and it is a third route again from Brazil’s, where imports were restricted and the domestic industry built MSX machines and cloned the ZX81 and Apple II instead of licensing Commodore at all.
What it covered
Issue one leads on the C-16, presented as an advanced computer with features “que sólo se encuentran en equipos de precios muy superiores” — found only in far more expensive equipment. Its reviews are of games a British reader would recognise, under names a British reader would not: Cabecera de Playa is Beach Head, alongside Blue Max, Donkey Kong and Archon. It promises to cover “los programas que se encuentran en el mercado argentino” — the programs found on the Argentine market, which is not the same set as anyone else’s.
⚠ The C-16 lead is issue one’s, not the run’s. Measured across all 27 issues the C-64 dominates at 66% of machine mentions and the C-16 takes 7%. A cover is not a corpus, and this entry originally drew the wrong conclusion from that first page before the run was counted.
The other Argentine machines appear as competitors: Talent, the local MSX, and Czerweny, the firm behind the country’s ZX81-family clones.
⚠ This entry is built from issues 1 and 2 and from counts across the run. This library holds no account of Drean the company beyond what its magazine says, and nothing here establishes the terms of the licence, the volumes built, or when manufacture stopped.
See also
- The C64 across borders
- Brazil’s market reserve — the neighbouring country that could not license
- Commodore 64